Printing, coating, calendering and other manufacturing operations in which rollers make continuous contact with the transported product, require that the surfaces of these process rollers be kept free of contamination in order to eliminate product defects. It is desirable that such process rollers be cleaned automatically during each production run to avoid down time of the manufacturing operation. This invention provides an improved automated system for the on-line cleaning of such process rollers as calender steel and compliant rollers, coating back-up rollers, printing blanket cylinders, etc.
The purpose and function of our automatic roll cleaner is to place a web of cleaning material against the surface of a spinning process roller a number of times during a production run without stopping the manufacturing operation. Contamination on the process roller is thus transferred to the cleaning material and removed from the manufacturing operation. By frequently removing contamination from the surface of the process rollers, the necessity for manual hand cleaning of these rollers is greatly reduced which further eliminates manufacturing down time. Most important, frequent cyclical cleaning of the process rollers, as is accomplished with our apparatus, improves the uniformity and quality of the product moving through the manufacturing operation.
The prior art that we know of is discussed, in relevant part, as follows:
U.S. Pat. No. 4,344,361 to MacPhee, issued Aug. 17, 1972 discloses an automatic blanket cylinder cleaner having a cleaning cloth for contact with the blanket cylinder. An expandable bladder intermittently presses the cloth against the cylinder as it rotates. The cleaning cloth advances intermittently from a supply roll to a take-up roll by means of a mechanical system, including a crank arm and a one-way clutch, to control the rotation of the take-up roll.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,525,982 to Wescott, issued Oct. 17, 1950 also discloses (see FIGS. 7,8) a cylinder cleaner having a web of cleaning material for contact with the cylinder as it rotates. The web is intermittently pressed against the cylinder by a cam mechanism to clean the cylinder. The cleaning web advances intermittently from a supply roll to a take-up roll by means of a mechanical system, including a crank arm and ratchet.